


When The Stars Begin To Shine I Finally Know You

by WhenIFindLoveAgain



Category: GOT7, JJ Project
Genre: Architects, Background Relationships, Comedy, Developing Relationship, Drinking, F/F, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff and Humor, Hanging Out, Hangover, Humor, Im Jaebum | JB-Centric, Letters, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Relationship, Sexual Humor, Snogging, Some Humor, University, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:28:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25821379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhenIFindLoveAgain/pseuds/WhenIFindLoveAgain
Summary: On the evening of his Grandmother's funeral and not wanting to hear his parents carrying on over wills and probation periods, Jaebum gets absolutely sozzled at his mate Jinyoung's house and they have some very interesting conversations about architecture conversion, their friend who can't decide if she's a lesbian or not, the worst ex-girlfriends, and how Jaebum once had Jinyoung snog him to get rid of the last one. A small ode to getting older and who wants to kiss who
Relationships: Im Jaebum | JB/Park Jinyoung
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





	When The Stars Begin To Shine I Finally Know You

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first one for these two, so, hold up for me. Enjoy :)

I remember you

I still love you

Always

Jaebum knew he shouldn't have done it, not really. Looking quickly at the card his Grandfather had popped into his Grandmother's casket before he kissed her head goodbye.

Jaebum felt something deep and rich and sad pool inside of him. The way his parents and uncles and aunt's were running about dividing up estates, cleaning homes, organizing funerals and probates, arguing about will contents for when their Father died, all this stopped them from caring around the old man.

Jaebum found him sitting outside in a wicker basket chair with a scotch whiskey in a crystal tumbler in one of his gnarled and rheumatic liver-spotted hands. 

"Hey, Grandad." Jaebum sat beside him. The old man gave a deep-throat hum, and, Jaebum didn't leave him. "Penny for your thoughts?"

The old man peered through him at eyes that had been repaired a couple of years ago, having been diagnosed with immacular degeneration. Jaebum's female cousins had nearly fallen over when they had found out it required their Grandfather to have an anaesthetic injection into his actual eye-ball.

"Blessed be the virtues of sad jazz music." The old man smiled a bit. He had a drink of the scotch whiskey. 

It was almost a naturalism rather than a old-wives-tale, of how it would be about eighteen months before the old man passed away; it was always the way. With the wife gone with her cooking, attention, love, telling's off, history and company no longer around, the men only lasted a few more months.

The funeral directors that had done Jaebum's Grandmother's funeral, the families had known each other for decades. Their great-grandmother's had been friends.

The head of the funeral directors usually gave only half an hour viewing to normal families, but, for Jaebum's family, he had said, "You can have the whole day."

Somewhere in the distance, a vinyl record played one of those sad jazz songs. 

Later that evening with his Grandfather tucked up in bed and his parents bickering like fools downstairs, Jaebum went out, not for the purpose of having a good time, but to just give some peach to his poor old Grandfather and get away from his parents.

One of his good mates, Jinyoung, rang up to see how he was doing. He knew about the funeral.

"...the way my fucking parents are carrying on over the will for when Grandad's gone, I swear to God, I'm ashamed to be their child..." Jaebum said to Jinyoung over the phone.

"Where are you now?" Jinyoung asked.

"Just popped around to see if Soyeon was home but she isn't." Jaebum had been walking down the Elm-tree lined street from her house when Jinyoung had called him up.

"Want to come around to mine and get smashed?" Jinyoung offered.

Jaebum chuckled. "Yeah, you're a life-saver, mate, thanks." He ran his hand through his hair, and, peered up into the dark sky. He wondered if he could be bothered walking or just get on a late bus around to Jinyoung's. He had never been too keen on buses, let alone night buses. His Father had once completely put him off them by saying that one night he had been out - trying to get a date with his Mother but had been unsuccessful - and that he had got on a late bus with all his mates, and, even on the second level, it had just been a sea of sick and other bodily fluids just sloshing from side to side.

"Jaebum?" Jinyoung said uncertainly.

"Yeah?" Jaebum answered. Quietly in the back of his head, he thought he might just get a train and walk a couple of blocks, and, perhaps not so politely for Jinyoung on the other end, he thought he might listen to Joji on his headphones as the train rattled on and some hooker would try and chat him up - a event that had happened on several occasions to him.

"You know with Soyeon?" Jinyoung quipped hesitantly.

"Hm?" Jaebum hummed.

"No, no, no, listen. You know with Soyeon how she's a bit of a lezzie, right? Well, half a lezzie?" Jinyoung said.

Jaebum laughed. "Yeah."

"I think she might have a girl on the side, I don't know for certain, but, I think she does. So, if you ring her up and she's a bit funny..." Jinyoung trailed off. Both of them were friends with the young woman who they had known since they were in high-school; Jaebum knew Soyeon through his Father knowing her Father, whereas Jinyoung had actually gone to school with her and had once had his nads kicked in by her on the football oval.

"She's gone anti-cock." Jaebum finished for Jinyoung. 

Jinyoung burst out laughing. "Not all lesbians are like that."

"But when Soyeon's lezzie side comes out she's like that." Jaebum answered. 

"God, she is, isn't she?" Even Jinyoung had to admit.

"See you soon, I'll walk to the tube station and then -"

"What are you on about? I'll come pick you up."

"What? You sure? Nah, it's out of your way."

"Don't be stupid, where are you?"

"Bottom end of Soyeon's street where those really old cottages are on the side of the hill at the top of the footie pitch where the university is on the other side."

"Got it in one."

"Sweet."

About ten minutes later, Jinyoung's second-hand black Mercedes-Benz turned up near Jaebum on the footpath. Jaebum knew that Jinyoung's Father had been bloody furious when his son had bought a "nazi-mobile" as the older man liked to refer to it as. "You waste good money on such a shit car created by a white-supremacist regime, you're an idiot." Had been the man's exact words. 

Jaebum climbed into the passenger seat. Jinyoung's car with the polished walnut dashboard and the dark-brown leather interior always had a bit of a cigar-smoke-scent about it even though Jinyoung didn't smoke. Jaebum commented this to Jinyoung as they did a u-turn in the street and proceeded to drive back through the inner city to Jinyoung's home, which, to be perfectly honest, was fucking jammy.

It was a three storey post office with a clock tower on a corner block built in the early 1900's, and, Jinyoung's Father had helped him, putting some money into it and helping him convert and renovate it, but, Jaebum remembered coming to see the two men covered in plaster dust with a Australian 70's rock and roll record playing in the background off a portable trans. radio with building materials lying around everywhere and stretches of sunlight into the space through the tall rectangular windows high-lighting a thick smog of dust-mites covering everything. 

"Hey, lad!" Jinyoung's Dad had shouted merrily out once. He had just been using a mop handle like a electric guitar and boogeying about like he was fifteen to "Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC while Jinyoung had nearly pissed himself laughing, filming on his phone. "Getting in a bit of rock and roll eh?!"

"Maybe I should take up smoking, give the aesthetic." Jinyoung grinned at Jaebum. 

"You'd need a leather jacket as well and maybe a nose or eyebrow piercing, because, I don't think a buzzcut would look any good on you." Jaebum answered. "You don't see many Korean skinheads."

"God, it's bad isn't it?" Jinyoung groaned. "Dad says for the same money I just could have bought a decent ute or a old Roller or something."

"Sorry to say it, but he's right." Jaebum told Jinyoung. 

When they got inside Jinyoung's, the first thing they did was go to the bridge, get out the beer, and open it up.

"Hey, show you a trick for this, come outside, don't want to wreck any of your house." Jaebum had said to Jinyoung when he couldn't find the bottle opener. They went out into the back garden which was bordered on all three sides - the east side bordered by old city council architecture which was truly astounding - with high brick walls and then series of lower walls which had been horse troughs and old brick beds. Jaebum tested out the edge of the beer-cap-lid on the edge of one of the old horse troughs that just had weeds and sour-grass growing in it before cracking it down and popping the lid off. Jinyoung laughed.

"Oh, that's how you do it, eh?" Jinyoung commented.

Two hours later, the two of them were well and truly sozzled.

They were chilling up in the fifth-storey of Jinyoung's house; even though the house itself was only three storey, the clock tower made it five-stories. 

Jaebum and Jinyoung sat together under the bell that hadn't rung for the last fifty years, and, they looked out through the windows in front of the clockface at the city below and ahead of them. It was a dreamscape of futuristic glass and steel architecture and the way it encompassed human life was more like 3020 than 1908 in this converted post office and clock-tower.

"It's so cool up here." Jaebum told Jinyoung sincerely, possibly for the hundredth time. Jinyoung smiled.

"You could move in with me if you wanted." Jinyoung told Jaebum. "Instead of paying over-priced rent in that old house you have down by the railway."

"Your Dad'd cut my testicles off." Jaebum told Jinyoung frankly.

Jinyoung rolled his eyes. "Bugger my Dad." He quipped.

"Ew, yuck." Jaebum winked. Jinyoung rolled his eyes.

"Mate, seriously." Jinyoung said. Jaebum pulled his phone out of the pocket of his jacket. "What are you doing?"

"I want to hear Soyeon-baby sing like a underworld goddess, it's the mood right now." Jaebum answered. Jinyoung laughed.

Soyeon had one of the naturally-deepest female voices ever recorded. She sound like she had a demon in her chest, this vicious, animalistic roar coming to the surface, sounding like her body as one of the human race had been technically reverbed. It was utterly transcending, and, it was Soyeon's secret to been so seductive. She just said anything and everything, and, suddenly, the world followed her with more intensity and trust and animal nakedness than any icon or God.

"Bubby?" Jaebum said as Soyeon picked up the line.

"Aiyoh?" Soyeon chirped.

"Could you sing that song you wrote about your ex?" Jaebum asked, looking over to Jinyoung who grinned widely but mouthed, "Oh, leave her alone for one night, you twat."

"Why?" Soyeon asked.

"Mood thing. Nanna's funeral today." Jaebum winked to Jinyoung who whispered that he was the devil.

"Oh, darlin'." Soyeon hummed. A few moments later, she began to sing:

"You come in and rawly open up my chest

How you do?" Both Jaebum and Jinyoung's eyes slipped close at the heated moaning lingeringness of her singing tone, deeper than the Midnight sky in the Winter.

"Search around and certainly guess what I'm feeling

I swear I do

No, do you keep me as the one as I'm singing this song

I'm infecting some thoughts, I'm ressurecting old Gods

Was it such a crime as high as murder as you carried me around

But when I met him I saw you're eyes never say sorry to me

As your aura fell and swirled around him

And do you have a heart?

You're irregular heartbeat is like the soundtrack to my soul

When I sleep beside you

And, hey now

Sleep beside you...

Cariad, Cariad

Cariad, no dawn on the night, Cariad 

You're the only one that burns on my night

And that piece of you is mine

Oh Cariad

Cariad, Cariad

That piece of you is mine

Every hair on your head is mine

Oh, yeah, yeah

Ooo, nah, nah, nah

Ey, yeah, yeah

Ooo, nah, nah, nah..."

"Woah!" Jinyoung and Jaebum both clapped an applause as Soyeon stopped singing. "Thanks darl!" Jaebum said to her.

"I got to go right now, you have a nice night, hey, man?" She said to him before audibly blowing them a kiss with a "mwah!" sound before hanging up.

"We're very lucky to have her, aren't we?" Jinyoung commented. Jaebum chuckled, but, then, they went silent. 

"I think I might have to stay here overnight, mate." Jaebum admitted his thoughts after a little while.

"I don't think I could drive you home, either." Jinyoung answered. "Couch or the spare room?"

"Just take the couch, love." Jaebum answered. Jinyoung burst out laughing. Jaebum frowned at him. "What?"

"You really must be smashed, you just called me "love"." Jinyoung told him.

"I did not." Jaebum frowned even more.

"You did." Jinyoung grinned.

"When?" Jaebum quipped.

"Just then!" Jinyoung exclaimed.

"Whatever." Jaebum dodged any more of Jinyoung's words.

"Don't get cranky on me." Jinyoung leaned over a bit and nudged Jaebum's shoulder. "What do you want?"

"Where's me fuckin' list?" Jaebum remarked drily.

Jinyoung laughed. "Come on, give me the first five things off of it."

"You sure?" Jaebum raised an eyebrow.

"Yeah, shoot for the stars." Jinyoung nodded.

"1. Sex

2\. More money

3\. A house as cool as yours

4\. I'll buy that Rolls Royce your Dad wants you to have instead

5\. Have six kids and a chocolate labrador - y'know, a dark brown dog that's a bit fat and sleeps all the time and doesn't get grumpy when he's got toddlers riding him like a little Welsh pony." Jaebum answered.

Jinyoung was silent for a few moments.

"Are you sure you want six kids, that's a lot." Jinyoung remarked after a while.

He and Jaebum burst out laughing.

"Yeah." Jaebum answered.

"We've had too much to drink, let's get back inside, it's getting cold." Jinyoung said. "Mind yourself on the stairs, I don't reckon I could even get an ambulance in this state..."

Jaebum chuckled. "God, you're a fuckin' hopeless wank."

"Yeah, yeah, you adore me, though." Jinyoung mumbled.

"Hmph."

When Jaebum settled down on the couch, Jinyoung sat up the other end, Jaebum's legs over his lap. They went silent again.

"Why's sex at the top of your list?" Jinyoung asked.

"Because dating's a fucking nightmare, don't know if you've noticed or not." Jaebum answered. 

"Is that why you've always thought Soyeon's cute even though she's half a lezzie?" Jinyoung remarked.

Jaebum shrugged. "Always thought she'd go for you out of me, but, then, when you think about it, she wouldn't go for either of us, she'd go for some other guy." He noticed Jinyoung looking at him. "What is it?"

"You look like you're going to go to sleep any minute, come on." Jinyoung coaxed Jaebum up into his bedroom on the third floor.

"This is your room." Jaebum muttered as he laid down on the bed before noticing that it smelt like Jinyoung's washing powder and soap scent and that on one of the bedside tables was the watch that Jinyoung knew his Mother had bought him for his eighteenth birthday. 

"It's alright, ok?" Jinyoung said down to him. 

"Says the guy who perfected the art of making love and fire." Jaebum mumbled, sitting up on his elbows; he was laying across the bed sideways and in the centre. Jinyoung went and sat cross-legged at the top where his upper body would usually lie. Jinyoung grinned. Jaebum shifted himself across the covers and lay closer to Jinyoung. 

"Oh, yeah." Jinyoung grinned. "You remember when you were with Sooyoung -"

"Oh, fucking don't." Jaebum cut him off with a regretful tone of voice. "Woman was a nightmare - pretty face, but, oh, never again..."

"And you managed to get her out of your life by saying you had fallen in love with me?" Jinyoung ran the knuckle of his index finger up and down the bridge of Jaebum's nose gently.

Jaebum grimaced apologetically. "Yeah, mate?"

"And you stuck your tongue seven inches down my throat in the hallway to get the message across?" Jinyoung started to laugh as Jaebum's face went bright pink. "Well, Soyeon uses that as her go-to comedy story on all her dates."

"The bitch!" Jaebum suddenly explained, sitting up straight.

Jinyoung burst out laughing and continued on as Jaebum seized him and demanded more information.

"I'll fucking kill her!" Jaebum moaned mournfully when Jinyoung just laughed too much to get a decent word out and it was useless to attempt otherwise. 

"Relax, everyone's had at least one gay or lezzie kiss in their lifetime." Jinyoung patted Jaebum's head. Jaebum came to sit beside him but with his legs stretched out.

"Your Dad hasn't." Jaebum told Jinyoung. They burst out laughing again but they both thought it was so gross.

"If you were to snog a guy -" Jinyoung began, but, Jaebum slapped his chest.

"Oh, fuck off." Jaebum said.

"Yeah, no, no, hear me out, right?" Jinyoung hit Jaebum's chest back and grinned. He mumbled a few seconds later, so, he tucked himself fully-clothed beneath the covers while Jaebum stayed where he was, sitting on top of them with his legs stretched out."

"Can't believe I fucking am, but, ok, alright, go for it." Jaebum sighed, coming around to grant Jinyoung his wish. He peered down to his friend's face and neck and the tops of his shoulders, the rest of him beneath the doona. "Yeah?"

"If you were to snog a guy, who'd it be?" Jinyoung grinned before winking cheekily, evidently trying not to put Jaebum in a awkward position when they were both drunk and could both get easily irritated and fed-up with the company of the other.

"Ah...no way." Jaebum shook his head.

"Yeah, tell me." Jinyoung insisted.

"Look..." Jaebum shifted down to lay beside Jinyoung, but, he kept on top of the covers. "I'm fucking three quarters cut so don't have a go in the morning, right?" He looked at Jinyoung, tipping his head to the side.

"I'll have my head in the toilet tomorrow morning so don't worry about it." Jinyoung answered with a form of promise. Jaebum sighed again.

"You." Jaebum said simply. "I'd snog you...again."

"Cariad, Cariad

Cariad, no dawn on the night, Cariad..." Jinyoung sung softly, doing his best to imitate Soyeon.

Suddenly, Jaebum nearly pissed himself laughing. "Cunt." He covered his face with his hands and still laughed as Jinyoung did his best effort, whic, truthfully, wasn't all that bad.

"You're the only one that burns on my night

And that piece of you is mine

Oh Cariad

Cariad, Cariad

That piece of you is mine

Every hair on your head is mine

Oh, yeah, yeah

Ooo, nah, nah, nah

Ey, yeah, yeah

Ooo, nah, nah, nah..."

Jaebum ended up sleeping in Jinyoung's bed with Jinyoung, and, at just before two 'o' clock in the morning when the cold snap of the night came through, Jaebum shifted beneath the covers with Jinyoung.

He woke up the next morning sleeping on his back with one hand on his stomach and the other above his head while Jinyoung slept on his side, his back to Jaebum. 

Curiously, Jaebum didn't feel too sick, but, what he was was still tired. It sort of came back to him as he woke up a bit more over the next four minutes. He had been up creeping around the house all night so as to not disturb Jinyoung with loud foot-steps and creaking floorboards because he'd been up pissing all night. Jaebum thought he might have had to get up six or so times. No wonder he just dozed back off again.

He felt Jinyoung nudging his shoulder two hours later at ten 'o' clock. 

"Jae, open your eyes, you got to see this." Jinyoung's voice floated around inside Jaebum's skull as he blearily opened his eyes. He soon became mildly aware of the sound of music playing in the kitchen and faint footsteps on the floor below that...someone was dancing. Jaebum dragged himself out of bed and was lead downstairs by Jinyoung to see Soyeon with her rose-gold 1920's bob-cut hair in a white satin petticoat with a lace trim on the v-neckline and spaghetti straps dancing around to "Reflections" by The Neighbourhood, the gold ankle-bracelet around her neck, wrist and ankle glinting in the morning summer sunlight.

"We were too close too the stars..."

She danced like a pagan woman, her eyes closed and a soft smile curving her mouth crookedly, spinning around in graceful slow movements alternating between en-point movements like a ballerina and just standing up on the arches of her toes on the coffee table in one of the living spaces of Jinyoung's house, her arms moving above and around her head. It was utterly entrancing to watch, and, even more so, she didn't seem aware that the boys were there.

"I never knew somebody like you, somebody

Falling just as hard

I'd rather lose somebody than use somebody

Maybe it's a blessing in disguise (I sold my soul for you)

I see my reflection in your eyes..."

"Morning, babes..." Soyeon's eyes opened to half-lids, and she lazily winked at them, still dancing around to her music. "You two are such a nice couple..."

Jaebum swiftly moved across the room and shoved her off the coffee table onto one of the couches.

They all had breakfast together, and, Jinyoung drove Soyeon back to her house, and, then, took Jaebum back to his. Jinyoung came inside Jaebum's cream-brick 1950's house for a few minutes when he dropped him off.

"Did you mean it?" Jinyoung asked.

"About what?" Jaebum quipped.

"If you were to kiss a guy it'd be me?" Jinyoung leant against the edge of Jaebum's kitchen table, gazing at him as Jaebum checked around the gully kitchen and quietly-horridly found that he'd left the connection switch for the oven turned on even though he had been out all night. Oh shit.

Jaebum looked at Jinyoung. "You're really thinking about that." He said. He went over to Jinyoung. There was something about the air that felt too natural, too inviting, too stick, too inticing, to tempting, like some sort of theme, a love theme, the depth burgeoning all the way beneath just out of their sight, but, it was filling them up. "Why are you thinking about that?"

Jinyoung took in Jaebum. "Maybe because I want it."

"When did you get around to that?"

"Everynight when the stars come out. I like the night; sometimes I can't wait until the day's gone, not because I'm wishing my life around, but, just because the night is my favourite time, my head's dream. And I start thinking about you, and, with it all, maybe you think I'm dreaming that I'm in love with you but I feel that when the stars begin to shine I finally know you. I realize there's a reason for everything you've done in your life, and, I begin to get it, you know that, right?" Jinyoung told him.

"This must be my dream." Jaebum murmured, not quite sure what was going on, one of his hands going through his hair conciously.

"But you're wide awake when you find out all this out." Jinyoung observed Jaebum's body and the way he moved, one side of his mouth lifting a little bit.

He got the hem of Jaebum's black t-shirt in his fingertips and drew the other man over to him before his hand slid up to Jaebum's neck and he pulled him in close.

"I'm always wide awake before I found you." Jinyoung murmured against Jaebum's mouth before he kissed the corner of Jaebum's mouth before getting up and leaving with a wink and his car keys with the Mercedes-Benz steel label carved onto the front of them dangling from his other hand.

Jaebum knew he'd regret it if he didn't do something.

He raced back out of his front door after Jinyoung, and, stayed with him all of the next while and the coming whiles.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote it a little bit like a faerie-tale at the end, I admit :) I hope you enjoyed it


End file.
